Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Mike:

Keyword capitlization  makes  a difference is in the URL's. (Personally I recommend sticking to lowercase.)

As far as elsewhere on page  as far as I can tell, the search engines don't differentiate.

Hi Alexa:

While strictly speaking, SEO is a separate discipline from CO (conversion optimization) it is possible to use  CO in conjunction with SEO.

Via your analytics, determine which terms are converting better or worse. When you get a handle on the jigher converting terms, start doing keyword research with those termsreplacing your targeted keywords in your SEO campaign with them.

To use  Montanna's example, you may find that the term "golf clubs" doesn't convert well, but instead the term "TX-90 does.

I use them mostly for my own study ofclient sites and competitors sites Casey. My current stable of clients tend to still dwell on  SERP rankings and numbers of visitors, while the metric I'm trying to train them in is conversions.

But if I had to explain mozRank, mozTrust, Domain Authority,and  Page Authority, I would tell them that the numbers are an approximation of what the Google algorithm assigns to pages, sites, etc. and since Google isn't sharing, it's the best method od ascertaining Google's values.

Hey Steven: Rather than try to tackle this by myself, I'm going to bring in some heavy hitters. Since you are a Pro member, you have free access to the Pro guides, but unfortunately I can't seem to find the Pro Guide to Link Building on the SEOmoz site at the moment to be able to give you a link.

I can however share an absolutely awesme YOUmoz post from by Scott.MClay that got promoted to the main blog:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-101-the-almost-complete-link-guide 

Hahah! My favorite answer these days is...it depends.

, if you have a mortgage company to push, then find your white flag now.

But if you have a niche industry, then yes, it is possible. But like everyone else has said. make the on-page rock solid and work on links.

Hi Brent.

My answer is geared more to "General thoughts to approach"

If you are building a site from scratch, then you need to be clear on your goals for the site, and build out  the site from there ( (SEO, content, design, etc.)

You had mentioned the following as your goal  [being] "a little different than typical.  What I am looking for in my web site is not sales, but viewership.  I want people to find my site, then keep coming back to my blog to follow what I do. So your goal is to build viewership.

From this point on you need to be in the mind of potential viewers. What kind of photos will they want to see? What will they be interested in reading about? The reason this is important is that you need to be able to get a handle on their intent. This will drive your keyword research, your content choices, etc.

As an important aside, you need to do more than just put keywords in your copy to accomplish your goals. You need some stunning photography and compelling copy. In other words, you need to create a site that is world class. So it deserves return visits from those that stumble across it.

Finally, if I were in your shoes, I would look for a niche within the world of photo blogs and start out trying to dominate that niche. This is just my personal preference. If you want to take on the whole photo blog universe right out of the chute,  then go for it.

Good luck and drop back in when you have your site and give us the URL. Good luck!

Hi Debi:

This is strictly my opinion, not backed up by any research, but if you have an ecommerce site  geared towards sales in English speaking countries, you want to get rid of any barrier in front of your customer. Poor grammar would definitely be a barrier.

I were a prospective customer I would be asking myself, will they get the order correct? If I have a problem with the order will I be able to  communicate it easily with them or will there be a language barrier?

I think it would be an important trust issue.

For that matter, I think poor grammar negatively affects native English sites.

Hi Derek:From the Moz manual,  "Meta refreshes do pass some link juice but are not recommended as an SEO tactic due to usability and the loss of link juice passed"

Also, some SEO's feel that Google looks askance at their use.

There's no way to talk them into a 301 redirect, huh?

Hey Mike: From what I read, it was a simple case of buying links and when the NYTbrought it to Matt & Co's attention, they manually delisted them.

Vanessa Fox had a great write up on it at  Search Engine Land.

Hiya Craig:  This post from YOUmoz might help you to be able to wrap your mind around it better.

Hey Thomas: I just sat through the video for the tool and it looks amazing! They say it uses 12 different sources for their link data(SEOmoz Linkscape, Majestic SEO, Google data, Yahoo, Technorati, etc.) THen it sounds like they give you a live verification. So to answer your question, it looks like it's doing both.

Thanks Tom. The problem I have with SearchEngineland is that there's too much info. I find that I tend to move on without reading if I'm short time. Now a "Readers Digest" of SEL would be great!

Hello Francisco: Really sorry to hear bout this. Bummer!

I've never personally experienced a DDOS attack ,so  I called the web host I use to get his advice. He said that Dreamhost should be able to offer some kind of DDOS mitigation service.He seemed surprised that they weren't able to block it if it was coming in from only 20+ IP addresses.

He also said that if the attack continued, they'd probably not want the account after a certain point. He seemed surprised that they weren't able to block it if it was coming in from only 20+ IP addresses.

One of the main reasons I use him is that he's always been helpful when I've had problems. He said that he'd be willing to host you for a month to see if he could help. His company name is   TRK hosting

Hi Petra: I'm hoping someone with mobile experience jumps in, but I remembbered reading a post from Cindy Krum (suzzicks) about mobile sites that might address your question. I'll have to just give you the URL as the Q&A text box is a bit wonky for my browser:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mobile-search-engine-transcoding

Hi Spencer:

I don't know if this qualifies as the easiest way , but it ranks right up there:

Virante's Recovery Tool

Hi y Kerem:

I can personally recommend three for you. as I own and have read all 3.. If you have to get just one then make it "The Art of SEO. It's written by a few co-authors, and our vey own Rand Fishkin is one of them m

Hi Byron. I agree with Spencer re: the rel canonical. Personally I would want to maintain access to the old sites front end during the transition as well as the admin portion. If you 301 it, all you'll see is your new site pages.

But this is purely personal preference. Both the rel acanonical and the 301 are good choices.

Hi Mike: I'm not sure this answer will be specific enough, but it will address some of your question at least. I wouldn't separate your landing pages from your site for starters. If people end up linking to them, you want that juice to flow into your site. It will also enhance usability and enable the visitor to discover other parts of your site.

Each of your LP's should have a clear call to action. You are paying for every visitor so make sure you get your best return on your PPC spend by crafting the best LP you can, and then test. test. test them with A/B testing to optimize your  results.

While this advice holds true for PPC, it's equally valid with best practices for  organic traffic.

Hey Daniel:

Is there a Google benefit by having links from microsites come in to the main site?  Here are some of the drawbacks to the approach.

#1) I think that Google is really good at finding groups of related nepotistic sites. So while they won't penalize you for the links, they will dilute the amount of juice they pass. Which kinda negates the purpose of setting it up in the first place, eh?

#2 The more important (IMHO) reason to avoid this scenario is that when you create multiple sites, you have to build authority for each of them to have anything to pass along in a link. It's much easier to concentrate your efforts on getting linksfor a single site than for multiple sites.

Hi Spencer:

I use an open source product calledKeePass. It's a tiny program that resides on my flash drive. Very easy to use, and access can be password protected or you can use a physical "key" that resides on the flash drive itself (my choice as the drive never leaves my desk.

I can't imagine going back to the piece of paper method and having to manually type the characters in now. I just copy and paste and in seconds I'm in.

After rereading my answers and yours, I'm inclined to agree with you G. I interpreted the question very narrowl Most of my experience has been with sites selling things, and  the PPC used has always been to drive traffic into regular permanent pages.

I'll tell you, this Q&A is harder than I thought! I'll have to be more circumspect when I answer a question!

Forgot to answer your beta question limit. No limit dude! Keep 'em coming. Yo'll know when it's too many when you run out of people to answer them

Hey Donnie: While I'm only a former Wordpress user and current Joomla hack, I would guess that the MVC frameworks give them more flexibility. Though that flexibility vomes at a price of having to be more proficient at PHP.

Hey Sean: The only thing about 301'a and Google that I'm aware of is that 301's do lose a little "link juice" But this would be from any link, external or internal. I've not heard of a difference in ranking between the two.

Ask them to show you what that "latest intelligence" is and have them explain their rationale. If it's the real deal, they should be able to back it up with something.

Changed my profile pick a month or so ago. I miss seeing my old dog Boozie though.

I switched from WP to Joomla because at the time, WP wasn't as ecommerce friendly. And I picked Joomla over Drupal because the general consensus was that while Drupal was more flexible, Joomla had an easier learning curve.

Good luck with whatever new CMS you choose.

Richard, you are a Q&A answering animal dude!

Hey Jos: I use a vector based drawing program (CorelDraw) and draw boxes with lines like you. I can highlight main pages by border thickness and colors.

It's probably not nearly as elegant as  Sameer's suggestions, but I've used it for so many years, it's as comfortable as a pair of old jeans